Ahead of the Curve

The robotics and automation theme has been gaining a lot of attention recently for good reasons. There is an industrial revolution emerging across all industries as they realise that the new tools and applications being developed will be highly disruptive to existing business models. These new technologies cover everything from autonomous cars and delivery drones to surgical tools.

"Emerging market debt and US high yield are an important diversification for us,” said Roland van den Brink, Metalektro’s managing director of investments.

He said the asset class was interesting as it is “counter-cyclical” to the business cycle – enabling “strong returns when other markets are weak”.

“Our allocation should help increase overall returns without increasing overall risk,” he said. “In addition the active management of these assets helps me to achieve my target of earning 40 basis points net of all costs through active management whilst keeping tracking error around two percent.”

The mandate is being managed as a separate account, Ashmore said. Mark Coombs, managing director of Ashmore IM, said: “The demand for emerging debt from pension funds and other institutional investors has been gradually increasing over the last year and a half, and the asset class is now widely seen as a long term strategic investment rather than as a tactical allocation.

The Ashmore Group has more than five billion dollars under management and administration. Meanwhile it has emerged that Metalektro has raised its pension contributions by three percent to 23% of salary.